نشریه نامه انسان شناسی
پیاپی 13 (پاییز و زمستان 1389)

One of the l ively and cont roversial debates in current sociology is the compat ibility or conflict between nat ionalism and democracy. This art icle will attempt to: clarify this conflict through making a dist inct ion between 11 types of nat ional ism that could be more generally categor ized under "civil nat ional ism" and "cultural nat ional ism"; argue that the civil nat ional ism is compat ible with democracy; art iculate why the cultural nat ional ism will not peacefully sit alongside democracy; propose that only civil nat ionalism may guarantee territorial and polit ical integrity of Iranian society; and discuss the implicat ions ofdifferent approaches to nat ionalism in relat ion to democracy in the context of the recent social movement in Iranian.

Oral literature comes from cultures and life of the ethnics, which t ransfers from generat ion to another reflect ing people’s life, beliefs and customs. Proverbs are one of the most important elements of oral literature that its usage and explanat ion has led to an important role in making cultures. The art icles aims at assessing the impact of the myst icism flow on the people’s culture as well as its influence on the oral literature and cultures. This art icle has been ext racted from a project, with the same t it le, that has been conducted in the Persian Language and Literature Research Center of Tarbiat Modarres University. The author, through the ext ract ion and select ion of three hundred (300) proverbs, has shown the reflect ion of myst icism flow on the people’s l ife and their at t itudes t oward this important social flow. Addit ionally, the art icle’s othergoalis paying at tent ion to the social aspects and customs of the myst icism than the concepts and terminology. After int roduct ion, background and the research method that have been employed for studying proverbs, their definit ion along with proverbs that are related to the myst icism will be ment ioned. Then myst icisms proverbs about the Sufi’s good attributes such as greatness and pat ience, humbleness and etc. will be mentioned.

The cultural custom of circumcision has been one of the cultural customs been pract iced bymany societ ies since ancient t imes.Circumcision means to cut some part of a sexual organ. The custom was administered both for men and women. At the present t ime, many societies do not pract ice it for women. This custom was administered through lots of formalit ies in the past but today these formal it ies are reduced and even disappeared in some societ ies. The circumcision customentails religious roots and in historical texts, its origins go back to the prophet ABRAHAM and also the Jews. The present research aims at studying its terminological, histor ical, religious and cultural status. The research method applied is documental method and here I tried to give a fairly comprehensive but simple vision about it through documents and texts.

This art icle uses textual analysis ofAt tar Neishabour i’s book t itled "Tazkirat al-Awliya", in an at tempt to provide a cultural and histor ical analysis of the life condit ions (styles) in the 12th century Iran, To do this, the art icle first examines the data collected from the text of the book including phrases and words ment ioning foods, housing and settlement. Then we would provide a categor ical typology of food, housing and set t lement in the 12th centuryin order to use them for analysis of the cultural condit ion and modes of l iving exercised in that period. Such analysis will outline three scient ific points and cont r ibut ions as follows: 1. Anthr op ological analysis is n ow par t of communicat ive analysis of text and vise versa. It is now evident that the complex communicat ion processes used by our ancestors cannot be known without using anthropological studies. Here we only provide a textual analysis about that t ime period, however, with a focus on analysis of modes of living in t he 12th century, we would also indicate that commun icat ion and anthropological studies can meet to provide a bet ter understanding of the historical events, 2- textual analysis is a part of cultural studies as it provides the lost l ink that facil itates understanding ofeveryday l ife of the ancestors; and 3- mult idisciplinary studies provide richer and more profound knowledge about issues concerning social studies in the contemporary world. Some of the findings indicate that poor l ife condit ions at that t ime cont r ibuted to format ion myst ic and theosophistbel iefs, and created an interact ion between material culture and beliefs of everyday life.

The Achaemenidrhyta include sometypes ofcups in different forms, dimensions and materials. In some manners, it seems that some invaluable kinds of these animal-headed or protome cups were symbols of owners indicating their social ranking. Such an implicat ion ofmeaning is not accessible unless these rhyta as art ist ic objects are analyzed with a different approach common in the art ist ic studies. Because of their relat ionship with cult beverages, cups in the Indo-European bel ieving system, which have part icular importance, can be considered as symbols that due to their connect ion t o specific myths and r ituals in an expanded Indo-European symbolic system are connected to the ideological construct ion of the culture in quest ion and then after create (a) meaning(s). Concerning the const ruct ional patterns, this study, through its symbolic and interpretat ive approach and its use of new comparative mythological methods is a qualitat ive research in nature. The data, in this study, which has been gathered based on l ibrary research t r ies not only t o reach a const ruct ion through meaning of relat ions ofcups and cult drinks in the Indo-European believing system, extendible to the Achaemenid society, but also to establish a connect ion between the Achaemenidrhyta as art ist ic objects and Haoma rituals.

The aim of this paper is t o explore the paradigmat ic foundat ions of interpretat ive - symbolic anthropologywith emphasis onGeertz perspect ive. The interpret at ive - symbol ic anthropology came to emerge in a per iod so called theoret ical turn at 1970s. Based on this perspect ive, the culture must be considered as a set ofsymbols,meaning and signs. Therefore, understanding the culture of society requires understanding the system of symbols and meanings. The current paper invest igates the histor ical background and paradigmat ic foundat ions of interpretat ive-symbolic anthropology including of ontological, epistemological and methodological aspects. At end, the pract ical status of Geertzian studies in Iran has been discussed and evaluated.

This study is based on the architectural remains and ceramic data collected from the excavat ions at three Neolithic sites located at the Central Iranian Plateau, Tepe Zagheh, at the Alvin Plain, Sialk in the Kashan Plain and Agh Tepe located at the vicinity of Gonbad Kavoos in the Gorgan Plain. On the basis of the available informat ion, three levels of societ ies from egalitarian to hierarchical and in the third stage to an organized society with decision-making system can be seen. The archaeological evidence, specially architectural remains and pot teries from Sialk and Agh Tepe during the Format ive Plateau period, i.e. about 7500 years ago prove that the dwellers were living in simple huts, made of branches of tree, which their outside was covered with mud and the diagnost ic potteries of the period were coarse and hand-made, either plain or seldom with unrecognizable geometr icmot ifs painted with diluted red ochre. The society of this per iod is a good example of the egal itar ian society. A few nuclear families consisted of a father, mother and children living in the site for a short period of t ime that at maximum lasted for one season. Dur ing the Archaeique Plateau Per iod, about 6500 years ago, the dwellers were living in single-room houses made of pise and st ill having hand-made coarse pot ter ies e ither plain or painted. At th is per iod, the mot ifs for decorat ing the pot ter ies were simple of geomet r ic pat terns and st ill were painted with diluted red ochre. With in th is per iod, wh ile represent ing a hierarchical form of society, several nuclear families were living in an area for a longer period of t ime and when the populat ion was reached at a certain level that caused some disorders in food supply, consequently a number of familiesmoved to other regions. In this type of the societ ies, decisions were made collect ively by the dwellers. The evidence for this per iod have been collected from Tepe Zagheh in the far western part, from Sialk, in the central part and also in Agh Tepe, the most eastern part of the Central Iranian Plateau.

This art icle invest igates the role and qual ity of religious (Islamic) elements and specially Shi’ite teachings in regulat ion, orientat ion, structural changes in system of transport and t ravels and generally in local t ransfer and t raveling exper iences in Iranian everyday l ife or basically in or iginat ion of new mot ivat ions or new direct ions in the field in Safavid-Qajarid period Iran have been studied in this art icle and it has been shown that a great part of shaping components of Iranian transport and travel system in this era-including spir itual and sub-cultural components such as mot ivat ions, ch oosing the suitable t ime, popular r ituals, and also material elements such as t ransport means and travel facilit ies-considerably have been originated in the framework of religious teachings or influenced by these teachings.